SENATE AGENDA ITEM III.E.2.
22 February 2005
The Impact and Feasibility of a University-Wide
Foreign
Language/Cultural Requirement at WIU
In October 2004, the
Faculty Senate charged the Council on Admissions, Graduation, and Academic
Standards (CAGAS) with undertaking a study of the impact and feasibility of a
University-wide foreign language and/or foreign cultural (FL/C) requirement at
Western Illinois University. As part of
this process, the Council has devoted a portion of each subsequent meeting to
this discussion. Data has been gathered
and input solicited.
Each department chair was asked to indicate the benefits and concerns of a FL/C requirement to their department. In addition, a listing of courses that would be considered “cross-cultural” was solicited. Over half of the chairs responded (appendix 1). CAGAS also looked at the top feeder high schools to Western to see what foreign language requirements they imposed (appendix 2). In general, the parochial schools require two years of FL. Public schools do not require FL although they may recommend it or include it in a required category for which FL is one of the options.
In terms of executing a FL/C requirement, there are three possible approaches. First, it could be made an admissions requirement. Students who did not meet this requirement would have a deficiency and have to fulfill it. They would be treated in much the same way as students who have a math deficiency and have to take a Math 099 course, which does not count toward graduation. Second, it could be a graduation requirement. This does not have to be entirely separated from the admissions requirement. Third, it could become a General Education (Gen Ed) requirement. With the latter option, we asked the Council on General Education (CGE) to get involved. They designated a member to be a liaison to CAGAS and fully participated in the process.
The Council also wants to make clear that it was not asked to make a recommendation as to the advisability of a FL/C requirement. We also want to indicate that this issue is complicated with extensive ramifications. How a FL/C requirement is defined makes all the difference. How it gets defined would shape the nature of the requirement(s). If the Senate endorses instituting a FL/C requirement, and selects a preferred approach, CAGAS would be willing to do a more in depth analysis of feasibility and implementation.
There were three sources of information used in the analysis of requiring FL/C as an admission requirement. The first was the perspective provided by the Director of Admissions. Second, CAGAS examined randomly selected incoming freshman transcripts. Finally, a web search was conducted that examined the admissions, general education, and graduation requirements of four-year colleges and universities in Illinois.
CAGAS was unable to examine the issue of high-school
cross-cultural courses as an admissions requirement due to the fact that these
classes are not clearly listed on high school transcripts and the Director of
Admissions indicated there was no easy way of determining which high school
classes might be cross-cultural.
The Director of Admissions has several concerns about a FL requirement:
1. It would require additional admissions staff to check the transcripts of incoming students to see if they had the required languages in high school.
2. Only three Illinois public universities require a foreign language for admission: University of Illinois—Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, and Springfield. Eastern Illinois University requires students to have a foreign language if they are in the College of Arts and Sciences. (Appendix 3)
3. Students may not want to apply or enroll at WIU because of the requirement, and guidance counselors may steer them elsewhere, since other state universities do not have the requirement.
On the positive side, the Director stated that a FL/C requirement could be perceived as increasing our academic criteria.
The Director reported that he did not personally know of any
research that shows that taking a language in high school is a predicator of
completing college.
374 randomly selected incoming (fall 2004) freshman student high school transcripts were examined out of approximately 2,000 records. 91% of the sampled students came from Illinois. Data were obtained on: language studied, years taken in high school, letter grade received, overall high school GPA, name of the high school, city, and state where the student took the foreign language courses. Appendix 4 contains the actual frequency tables for each variable.
277 (74%) of the students took Spanish; the second most popular language was French (47 students [12.6%]). Only 16 students (4.3%) did not have any foreign language. 305 students (81.6%) had two or more years of foreign language. The mean number of years of a foreign language taken was 2.4 years and the mode was 2.0 years. A few students took more than one language in high school.
When examining the letter grade that students received in their high school language course, 18 did not have grades reported. Two students received “F’s” and 33 students received “D’s”. The largest percentages earned B’s (39%) and C’s (34%).
Catalogs were reviewed for 53 Illinois colleges and universities and their FL admissions requirements, using information available from a web site (www.50states.com/college/illinois.htm ) (appendix 5). 26 Illinois institutions do not have a FL admissions requirement. Only Northwestern University reported a foreign language requirement that was based on the College or Department that the student was enrolling in. 13 schools recommended a foreign language, with most of these recommending two years. Finally, 14 Universities required a foreign language, typically as one of several options that the students could pick from.
If a FL/C requirement is
instituted as a graduation requirement, one option is to allow it to be
satisfied upon sufficient high school language courses. Alternatively, it could be demonstrated by a
competency exam taken upon admission. A
graduation requirement could be shaped as discipline specific, similar to the
Writing in the Discipline (WID) model.
Each major becomes responsible to specifying what FL/C requirement is
imposed, within a set of general guidelines.
A second option is a university-wide competency requirement. This would be similar to what we do with
Math competency. We would define the
FL/C requirement at the baccalaureate level for all students and allow them
various ways to fulfill it (e.g., testing, classes, travel experience,
etc.). One concern is how to treat
transfer students—in the same way as our entering freshmen?
At the request of CAGAS, the Council on General Education was asked to conduct a discussion regarding the implications of incorporating a FL/C requirement as part of the General Education Curriculum. The content of this discussion is summarized as follows:
The impact and feasibility of incorporating a FL/C requirement as a part of the Gen Ed curriculum depends upon how such a requirement is implemented. If WIU adds 3-6 more hours to the General Education requirements, many students will have difficulty graduating in a timely fashion, particularly in those fields where state requirements and other outside certification requirements already dictate how program hours are allocated. Such a requirement would also have a major impact on the resources of the Foreign Languages Department particularly if the requirement were for 6 additional hours of language only, rather than a language and/or culture requirement.
There is also the possibility of requiring that 6 hours of current Social Science, Humanities, and/or Multicultural courses be taken as courses that deal almost entirely with societies outside the borders of the USA (i.e., World Regional Geography, Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics, Cultural Anthropology, History of Asia, World Religions, Music in World Cultures, etc., as well as Elementary French or Spanish, etc.).
If WIU decides to set aside 6 hours of current General Education to be FL/C courses, it means that students will have fewer Gen Ed hours to devote to other subjects areas. This will of course mean fewer students (and eventually fewer resources) for other departments not involved in offering these courses.
Another option might be to split the difference -- add 3 more hours to General Education as a non-USA requirement (language or culture or both) and require that 3 of the current hours are non-USA. This option would impact both of the first two options, but less so in both cases.
From a feasibility standpoint each option raises questions about:
a) How to ensure that a sufficient number of courses/sections will be offered to meet the increased demand and,
b) The complexities involved in tracking whether an individual student has met the requirement.
The Council on General Education was especially concerned that Multi-cultural courses that dealt with underrepresented groups in the US not suffer enrollment losses because of a new emphasis on international understanding, which could potentially divert students from the USA-based courses to the non-Western ones (please keep in mind the distinction between "Cross-Cultural" -- to mean the study of non-Western societies, and "non-USA" or "international" courses, which could include Introduction to Shakespeare or History of Art, for example).
The CGE agreed that Western students would benefit from being exposed to non-USA societies/cultures but were not united about the best way to accomplish this -- requiring some level of competency in a second language or requiring some level of understanding of other cultures beyond the USA. Members also expressed concerns about the implications of a language-only requirement on students' ability to prepare for their other classes, given the amount of time that language study would likely require for many of our students.
An additional implication of putting a FL/C
requirement in General Education is related to the IAI. Under the
Illinois Articulation Initiative, if a student completes their General
Education program at another university, college, or community college before
transferring to Western, we cannot require them to complete additional Gen. Ed.
requirements that we might have (i.e., Multi-cultural). If the
requirement is a graduation requirement, we can still require it of them.
The issue of the impact of FL/C requirement on the
Department of Foreign Languages was considered. The available classroom (lab) space, the current supply of
instructors, and the prospect of hiring additional staff were considered. Appendix 5 details the response of the
Department to these issues.
Cross-Cultural Offerings
If a FL requirement is broadened to include
cross-cultural courses, a determination must be made for what courses fulfill
this area. As noted by the responses by
department chairs, many departments currently offer courses that may be
applicable (appendix 1). As noted
above, there are concerns by the Gen Ed Council that this could have a negative
impact on the current multi-cultural course offerings
If the intention of the Faculty Senate is to encourage a minimal competence in the understanding of a foreign language, then an admission requirement will best serve that need. Students will have time in high school to take a sufficient number of courses, and daily reinforcement is the norm. In addition, the earlier an individual studies a foreign language, the better their ability to internalize it. This would have the added advantage of encouraging a more rigorous curriculum in the high schools. It would also displace the responsibilities for staff to teach languages to those schools.
If the sampling of transcripts from enrolled students is accurate, then only 4-5% of incoming students will have studied no foreign language, and only 19-20% will have less than two years. In order to serve those students, the university would need some 100 seats for those with no high school language (4 sections) and 400 seats for those lacking the full second year of the language (16 sections).
If the faculty senate is concerned that this additional high school requirement would have a chilling effect on recruitment, then it could accomplish something similar with a graduate requirement that could be met by studying a language in high school, passing a proficiency examination, or beginning language courses at the university. This might, however, encourage students to postpone their language study to college, increasing the load they must take– and pay for – in college and slowing their progress toward graduation. There would also be pressure to require only one year of college study (given the demands of major requirements and the need for adequate numbers of teaching staff). Such a requirement would not probably meet the standard of minimal competence in a foreign language – the goal in the first place.
If the intention of the Faculty Senate is to encourage (require) students to engage meaningfully with the cultures of the world, then a foreign languages and cultures requirement defined either through individual majors or through a general education requirement is the most logical. If the requirement is defined by majors, it is acknowledged as an extension of the major – as a means to a professional or career end. If it is defined by the general education curriculum, it is acknowledged as a part of a liberal education – common among students of whatever major and serving ends not purely economic. In either case, such requirements would probably extend beyond simply language study to other topics. Thus, the increased demands for staff (and tuition payments by students) are more difficult to determine. Time would need to be spent in defining the goals for such courses and determining what courses satisfy those goals (a process more time-consuming if it is a general education rather than a major requirement).
If the requirement does become a part of general education, it would join a number of other requirements (both in existence and proposed through the strategic plan) that are topical rather than epistemological. These include the present topics of human well-being, cross-cultural and multicultural awareness (and their central concern of social justice); to these may be added civic responsibility, the environment, and any future university theme.
In addition, the strategic plan mandates the inclusion of a commitment to service learning and technological literacy, while groups working on new initiatives wish to recommend the abandonment of the writing emphasis if the First Year Experience becomes a university-wide requirement. Taken collectively, these pressures suggest that the entire general education curriculum needs to be revisited in order to confront the differences between its structures and the new vision for the undergraduate experience. If the Faculty Senate chooses to make foreign languages and cultures a general education requirement, the details of that requirement would then need to be worked out in relation to these other topics and expectations.